When someone says, "So tell me about yourself" I'm usually stymied. So I thought I'd try listing all these tid-bits in one place so I might eventually have an interesting response instead of coming across as a complete moron. Well, it seemed like a good idea when I started...

Anyway, here goes. They're not in any particular order.

• Handicrafts
  • Making and repairing musical instruments:
    • Keyless flutes, penny-whistles, and pan-pipes
    • Twin-whistles, like the "aulos" in ancient Greek sculpture.
    • Designed and built custom zithers
    • Double-reed cornamuses, from pre-bored stock
    • Replacement parts for harpsichord mechanisms
    • Re-corked and re-padded clarinets
  • Chain mail armor, 4-in-1 and 6-in-1 from aluminum and stainless steel. (Stainless is hard.)
  • Silver and bronze jewelry making
  • Semi-precious lapidary (jem cutting and polishing)
  • Knife-making (haven't tried "smithing" a knife, yet...)
  • Etching metals (chemically and electrically)
  • tinkering with locks and key-making
  • Fiber arts:
    • Cord- and rope-making.
    • Crochet (3-dimensional spiral shaping? No problem!)
    • Knitting (I design patterns and make my own needles but I could use more practice to get consistent tension.)
    • Weaving (hand-plait, tablet, and backstrap loom)
  • Net making and mending
  • Mom taught me Macramé so long ago that I don't remember it.
  • Dad taught me how to develop black-and-white pictures, way back.
• Computing
  • Open Source Projects
    • Served as the original "Linux Device Registrar", allocating device major/minor numbers and helping to solidify the device naming conventions.
    • Founded the GNUPIC Archive to further Open Source development tools for Microchip PIC microcontrollers.
    • Worked on Midori Linux with the Linux Group at Transmeta.
    • The Micro Local Spooler was created for use in embedded systems.
  • Languages
    • Assembly language (Z80, PDP-11, 6809E, 68HC11, 68k, PIC)
    • BASIC (ABASIC, GWBASIC, Extended Color BASIC, TRS PC-5/6 BASIC, Phil's BASIC, ByWater BASIC, PBASIC, BASIC09, Visual Basic 3.0 & 4.0)
    • Pascal (Turbo Pascal, UCSD P-system Pascal)
    • Fortran (Fortran 77 under UNIX and under the UCSD P-system)
    • Shell and batch scripting (.BAT, sh, csh, tcsh, ksh, bash)
    • C (Small C, Quick C, Personal C, GNU gcc, Ultra C, PIC C, PocketC)
    • C++ (GNU gpp, Visual C++)
    • Tcl/Tk
    • Perl 5
    • HTML 3
    • CGI scripting in C, sh, and Perl
    • Java and JavaScript, experimentally
    • Scheme, for a Gimp plug-in.
    • I've toyed with Lisp, Smalltalk, Forth, and Occam, but haven't written anything serious in them.
  • Operating Systems (not counting ROM BASICs)
    • Linux
    • DOS/Win31/Win9x/WinNT/WinXP
    • UNIX(tm) (AT&T, BSD, Unixware)
    • VMS
    • OS9
    • PalmOS 3.0
  • Platforms
    • x86-compatable PC
    • Embedded PowerPC
    • M68k
    • Palm III
    • TRS-80 Color Computer (6809E, Model I)
    • TRS-80 Model III (Z80)
    • PET
    • PDP-11
    • VAX
    • Convex
    • Sparc 10
    • Macintosh
    • an old Sperry system that needed 400 Hz power, very icky...
  • You'll see my name in the /usr/src/linux/CREDITS file for coordinating device driver major and minor numbers, instigating the popular use of the PC speaker as a sound output device via "au-play", and for translating error messages for ByWater BASIC into Esperanto.
  • Embedded system software.
  • WAN management (Wisconsin Electric Power Co., a state-wide network)
  • Obviously, I do web pages.
  • Fileservers (NFS, Samba, ftp)
  • Web servers (httpd, Apache, and custom)
  • DNS name servers
  • E-Mail servers and gateways using Sendmail and custom Perl scripts
  • Internet proxy servers using SOCKS
  • Automated Internet connection servers
  • Router and bridge configuration
  • Dial-up service configuration
  • Automatic alphanumeric paging (lets you know when your jobs have finished ...or crashed)
  • BZFlag world generation in Perl.
• Electronics
  • Circuit board layout, etching, soldering, etc. (kit skills)
  • Mixed analog and digital measurement system design
  • Low-level control and protocol development in firmware
  • PLD replacements for discrete logic (Mach 3)
  • Radio-frequency circuit design
  • Amateur radio, KB9OBN
• Humanities
  • With effort (and a dictionary), I can read and write in Esperanto.
  • Occasionally I've written original poetry and short stories, but I've only been published in academic periodicals.
  • Alphabets are a hobby of mine. I can sound out (though not necessarily understand):
    • Greek
    • some varieties of nordic runes
    • printed and handwritten Gothic
    • Western Middle English (pre-Welsh)
    • Old German type and script
    • Cyrillic type and script
    • Old Irish
    • If I really press my memory I may be able to eek out some Hebrew and Katakana.
    • I tried learning Egyptian phoneme heirogliphs, Persian, Sanskrit, Ogam, and Gregg Shorthand, but they've almost completely vanished from my memory now.
• Miscellaneous Interests
  • Playing woodwinds (clarinet, flute, recorder, fife, pennywhistle, etc.) Does harmonica count?
  • Whistling (I'd like to try "choral whistling" some time.)
  • Singing (solo, choir, madrigals)
  • Zymurgy, though mine always suffered from the use of bakers' yeast
  • Cryptography (I helped Bruce Schneier revise the first edition of Applied Cryptography and I even found errors in his list of known errata!)
  • Fingerprint identification techniques.
  • Irish Ceili and Set dancing... fun!
  • Celtic folk music. I play D whistle and G flute whenever I can make it to a session.
  • I've raised ducks!
  • Gardening. Tomatoes, strawberries, 3 kinds of mint, garlic, etc. It's really satisfying to have a tasty meal where only one or two ingredients (if any) weren't home-grown. Gardening in California was a completely different experience, with lemons, miniature oranges, grapes, figs, persimmons, apples and pears...
  • Pruning fruit and shade trees. Each kind of tree and shrub has its own peculiar needs, not an easy thing to learn. I had great hopes for the avocados in Fremont but we moved before they could recover from the previous owners' treatment.
  • I can ski (water, cross-country, and downhill) just enough to say so.
  • Flying model aircraft is a real blast (and windy days suck).
  • I think way too much for my own good, and I regard far too many people much too fondly.